Damn straight. He punched in the number for the SSD. While he waited for an agent to answer, Luke’s left hand reached for Monica’s. His fingers curled around hers.
The elaborate house rose before them, huge and stark, as it waited on the hill just beyond the black, electronic gates. Max braked hard, making the car squeal, and he punched in the security code for the gate with hard stabs of his fingers.
“Maybe you should have called first,” Sam said quietly as her gaze scanned the perimeter. A big wall, yes, but no guards, no one actually outside to protect anything. There were two security cameras that she could see perched up on the entrance gates, but those would be easy enough to bypass.
“He wouldn’t have answered.” Hollow. Cold.
Sam frowned. That didn’t sound like Max. Not at all.
The gates opened with a low groan. The Jeep lurched forward, narrowly missing a slash on each side from the gates’ long poles. Somewhere in the distance, dogs snarled and growled.
The vehicle shuddered to a stop in front of an ornate entranceway. Max jumped out and she was right behind him, hurrying up the marble steps as he pounded on the door. “Beth! Jesus, open the door!” he yelled.
Lights flashed on inside the house. Sam eased back so she could look above them.
Max’s fist crashed into the door. “Now!”
But the door didn’t budge.
Sam licked her lips and tightened her hold on her bag. Her ID was in there, her phone—her only way to be traced. “Max, we should—”
The door opened. A tall woman wearing a gauzy blue robe glared at them. “What the hell, Max? Do you know what time it is?”
His gaze raked her. “Wake him up.”
“You know what he takes at night.” A long sigh filled the air as the woman stepped back. “That’s just not gonna happen.”
Max strode over the threshold. Sam followed close behind.
“Brought… company, did you?” The woman asked softly. “Well, isn’t this just—”
Max was already on the stairs.
“Wait, no, you can’t—”
He paused halfway up the steps. “I got a call thirty minutes ago, Beth. Quinlan’s been taken. Some ass**le wants Frank to ransom him.”
Beth’s eyes widened, and she staggered a bit. “T-taken?”
Max raced up the rest of the stairs.
Sam hesitated. “Who exactly are you?” She needed to figure out all the players in this game.
The blonde swallowed. “B-Beth Dunlap. F-Frank’s… personal assistant.” Light blue eyes narrowed. “And who are you? The latest girlfriend?”
“Uh…”
An older man with stooped shoulders walked from the shadows. “Beth, what’s happening here?” The man asked in a quiet voice.
Beth belted her robe. “Max is here, Donnelley. He says—he says Quinlan is missing.”
No, he’d said that Quinlan had been taken.
“I think—” Sam began.
There was a roar from the floor above them, loud and enraged.
Sam ran for the stairs with Beth right on her heels. “Frank!” The other woman screamed. “Frank!”
They reached the landing. Sam spun to the left, then the right. There. Broken wood in the hallway. She ran forward, racing under the giant chandeliers and darting around the wood. Max was in the room, shaking another man, a man with silver-streaked black hair. A man whose body was slack and whose eyes were closed.
Still closed?
You know what he takes at night.
“Wake up!” Max shouted. “Wake the f**k up! Your son is gone, do you hear me? Gone!” He shook him, sending the guy’s head flopping back.
Sam lunged and grabbed Max’s arm, stilling the rough movements. “Don’t…”
His head whipped toward her, and there was agony in his eyes. “I didn’t want to come back to this damn house,” he muttered. “Didn’t want to see—”
“M-Max?” Bleary eyes opened.
“What’s he on?” Sam demanded. The older man from downstairs had come into the room. He was watching everything, but staying back.
“Sleeping pills,” he told her in that same quiet, calm voice. “He always takes some at night.”
That’s why the kidnapper called Max and not this Malone. He knew what Malone did every night. Knew that he couldn’t talk with them.
That meant the kidnappers had to possess an intimate connection to the family, one that had allowed them access to this knowledge.
“You’re his damn doctor, Donnelley,” Max fired at him. “Get Frank up!”
Donnelley swallowed. “I-I’ll do what I can.”
Sam kept her hold on Max. His stepfather’s eyes had already closed. She pulled Max back from the bed, tugging hard and curling her fingers around him. His body was tense against her.
A small chime sounded from her purse, a faint vibration of sound.
Her breath caught. Oh, hell.
Max shook his head. “Beth, has anyone been by tonight? Did you—”
Beth’s hands were balled into fists. “I don’t think so. I was here, but asleep. I didn’t—”
“What did he say when he called, Max?” Sam cut in. A message. He’d mentioned something about getting another message.
The phone on the nightstand began to ring. Long, hard warbles of sound.
Frank flinched, and his eyes opened again, but everyone else froze.
Max exhaled on a hard breath. His gaze was on the phone. “He said they’d be contacting Frank.”
The phone rang again.
“They wanted you to get him up,” Sam breathed the words. “They knew, and they wanted—”
Beth sprang forward and grabbed the phone.
Max locked his fingers over hers. “No.”
Another ring.
“Answer it!” Beth cried.
Max glared at his stepfather. “Bastard. He needs you.” He shook off Beth’s hold and picked up the phone.
“We’ve got her location,” the cool voice said in Luke’s ear. “She’s at 1000 Rightmont Lane. It’s the home of Frank Malone, the guy who—”
“I know him.” Everyone knew about Fuck ’em Frank Malone. The guy had made his fortune by leveling the small business district just outside of D.C. Luke huffed out a breath. “Frank has a son, right?”
“Right,” Ramirez told him, seeming way too awake for a guy who was still in the office at three a.m. “His son is Quinlan Malone, age twenty-three. Until pretty recently, Quinlan was a student at Georgetown.”